Matthew Douglas, “The Evil Empire”
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“Hi, welcome to Walmart,” says the greeter. You smile back
politely in acknowledgment before you quickly enter the store. You
have to shop. You have to find the best deals. You fill your cart with
disposable razors, diapers for the baby, socks, batteries, dog biscuits,
skim milk, chocolate candies, white bread, gum, mayonnaise, chunk
cheese, your favorite magazine, and a few impulse buys with prices
too good to pass up. It was just a quick visit today. You make your
way to the register and the cashier rings up your items and tells you
the total damage to your wallet. You smile to yourself knowing you
saved a bundle of time and money. Walmart is your one stop shop.
You leave the store with bags in hand, only to find a chanting mob
outside the store: volunteers for the union. They yell out many of
Walmart’s faults: its discrimination toward women, its dismal health
care benefits, and its barely livable wages. You wonder how much of
this is true. You’ve heard these arguments before, but look at how
much money Walmart saves you. Is it really as bad as the union says?
Is Walmart some dark empire, or the chosen target for some of the •
many problems American consumerism has created? Has the
company been singled out unfairly?
Within fifty years Walmart has grown from a few stores in
Arkansas to a multibillion-dollar corporation that spans the entire
United States and many countries around the globe. Sam Walton
opened the first Wal-Mart in 1962 to save the customer money,
which is the Walmart motto. Expanding rapidly nationally and
internationally, Walmart consists of more than 6,200 facilities and
1.6 million employees worldwide. Walmart affects millions of lives
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on a daily basis: over 138 million global customers visit the store
each week (“Walmart Facts”). With numbers like these it’s obvious
how influential Walmart is both nationally and internationally.
Walmart saves its shoppers money with every shopping experience.
But many critics dislike the methods Walmart uses to save its
consumers money.
Douglas begins
his argument
with a brief
narrative of
the Walmart
shopping
experience
The key
question to
be addressed
in Douglas’
argument
Gives history
and background
information
about Walmart
While so many vilify Walmart for its sins, few look at the
big picture: if Walmart were to disappear off the face of the earth,
other companies like it would still pay minimum wage to save you
and me money. What about Target or Kmart? Walmart is not an evil, •
all-consuming empire but a product of its times. American culture
made stores like Walmart possible; it is the consumerist culture that
epitomizes America. It is the need, the demand for more stuff, and
our desire for material wealth that fills our closets, our drawers, and
our garages. As consumers we want the new, the flashy, and we want
it now for a discount price. While I have oversimplified American
consumerism and made it sound like the only factor, which it is not,
consumerism is definitely a large contributor to big retail chains.
Walmart, along with other big business stores like it, fulfills the
desire for stuff and saves the consumer millions. In fact, Walmart
saves its customers about $16 billion a year, writes Harvard business
professor Pankaj Ghemawat and business consultant Ken Mark. But
in order to pass on these savings to the consumer, Walmart
associates receive what many believe to be sub-par healthcare
coverage and salaries. Critics also charge that Walmart destroys
local businesses and communities. In addition to unfairly targeting
Walmart, many overlook the company’s openness to criticism and
willingness to change.
According to freelance writer Liza Featherstone, Walmart is
as bad as the unions proclaim the corporation to be. Featherstone
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strongly criticizes Walmart in her 2005 article “Down and Out in
Discount America.” Walmart’s obsession with saving the customer
money, she argues, has a price. Its employees largely pay for that
price in the form of low wages. According to Featherstone, the
average Walmart worker makes just over $8 an hour (about
$15,000 a year). She cites Al Zack, former vice president for strategic
programs of United Food and Commercial Workers, who claims
Walmart “needs to create more poverty to grow.” Featherstone
creates a comparison between Walmart and Henry Ford. Where Ford
thesis
statement
Introduces
an important
opposing
viewpoint
paid his employees plenty so they could buy Ford cars, Walmart does
the opposite. Walmart’s low wages help to keep poverty going,
Featherstone reasons, thus allowing Walmart to grow. The low wages
also keep them from being able to shop anywhere else but at
Walmart. She claims Walmart uses welfare to supplement its low
paycheck, citing that Walmart encourages its workers to apply for
federal assistance. So it is the taxpayers’ dollars that help Walmart
associates get by (Featherstone). But, unfortunately, these are realities
in retail. And Walmart is not alone. It is the price that some must
pay so that American consumers can enjoy discount prices.
Minimum wage helps to make these discount prices possible.
Today, the average American Walmart employee makes close
to $11 an hour (around $21,000 a year). This may not seem like much,
but it is above the poverty line. Currently, Walmart’s pay is four dollars
higher than the federal minimum wage. Even when Featherstone’s
article was up to date in 2005, Walmart was still several dollars above
the federal minimum wage (“Walmart Facts”). I have held a part-time •
job at Price Chopper, a northeast grocery store chain, for five years,
and I have yet to make $9 an hour. It is how the retail world works. To
keep prices low for the customer, companies pay minimum wage, cut
worker hours, and offer minimum healthcare. “The fact is,” writes
Robert Reich, former secretary of labor for President Bill Clinton,
“today’s economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers
deals largely because it hammers workers.”
Besides Walmart’s low pay, people criticize the company’s
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healthcare. The plan is said to be too expensive for the average
Walmart employee to afford. Thus, many reason, few Walmart
associates have insurance. However, this is not the case. Walmart
reported that as of this year, 92.7 percent of its employees had health
insurance, a two percent increase from last year. In fact, the national
average of uninsured workers nationwide is significantly higher than
the number of Walmart employees that lack coverage. The U.S. Census
Bureau recently announced 17.7 percent of Americans do not have
Cites Douglas’s
personal
experience as
evidence
Refutes the
position of
unspecified
naysayers
healthcare, versus the 7.3 percent of Walmart’s workers who lack
coverage. Walmart’s insurance includes medical and dental benefits
but not eye care. But what it is short of, the company is trying to
make up for. This year Walmart partnered with 1-800-CONTACTS
in an effort to “help drive down healthcare costs.” The long-term
agreement will bring contact lenses to Walmart customers at lower
costs. The two companies estimate this partnership could save
consumers $400 million in the next three years. And because many
of Walmart’s employees are also Walmart customers, they will also
be able to partake in this benefit (employees can even use their
Walmart discount, which will help to save them even more money).
Walmart also offers and continues to expand its $4 prescription plan.
“Our $4 prescription program is proof that Wal-Mart is committed to
meeting America’s healthcare challenges,” says Dr. John Agwunobi,
senior vice president and president for Walmart’s professional
services division (“Walmart Facts”).
Walmart is also believed to be the sole cause for running
small family businesses into the ground. Freelance writer Floyd
McKay reasons local downtowns become ghost towns when big-box
retailers such as Walmart move in. He writes, “Wal-Mart is like a
neutron bomb, sucking life out of small towns, leaving buildings
without the essence of civic life.” Critics like McKay state mom-andpop stores cannot compete with Walmart’s discount prices, forcing
the small businesses to close for good.
However, business columnist Steve Maich counters that
Walmart actually boosts local economy rather than destroying it.
Maich cites Carol Foote’s experience with Walmart as an example
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of how the company helped her town. In 2000 Foote helped to
organize bringing a Walmart to her hometown, Miramichi, New
Brunswick. Critics warned Foote and other Walmart supporters that
it would ruin local businesses. However, Foote suspected Walmart
would invigorate local businesses just as it had done throughout the
rest of Canada. She turned out to be right. In 2002, Ryerson
Refutes
McKay’s
argument
University completed a major study of Walmart’s impact on small
retailers. What they found was the opening of big-box retailers like
Walmart was an economic boon for the whole area: attracting other
retailers and driving up sales at nearby stores. The study concluded,
“It is difficult to make the case that a Walmart store actually puts
other retailers out of business.” Two years later, a survey conducted
by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce found that of the 1,800
small businesses that participated in its study, the vast majority
claimed Walmart had little or no impact on them. “And while critics
portray [Walmart] as the work of a ravenous invading force,” writes
Maich, “the truth is most communities reached out to Wal-Mart and
embraced it.” Communities such as Miramichi. Foote says Walmart
has created dozens of jobs for her hometown and “brought new life
to the town’s small commercial district” (qtd. in Maich).
Like anything man-made, Walmart has its defects. I am not
saying Walmart is blameless. I am saying Walmart is not the only
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corporation at fault. Furthermore, the company knows it has flaws
and is responding to them. Some of their responses include $4
prescriptions and the company’s partnership with 1-800-CONTACTS.
Walmart is also committed to saving the environment. The company
has helped to permanently conserve 395,000 acres of land for critical
wildlife habitats. Walmart has also opened two experimental supercenters built out of recycled materials; vegetable and motor oils heat
the stores. The two stores are dedicated to sustainability and will
lead the way in finding methods to apply environmental practices to
other Walmart facilities (“Walmart Facts”). Walmart is adapting and
in ways that other companies are not. It is this openness to change
that proves Walmart is concerned about more things than making a
quick buck. Many people often deem change too scary or too risky.
Yet Walmart takes such risks and creates good reforms that benefit
millions of lives each and every day. While Walmart is far from
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perfect, it is not the evil empire many critics have made it out to be.
Conclusion
restates
Douglas’s
thesis—with
variations
Gives Douglas’
final answer to
the question
raised in his
title
Works Cited
Featherstone, Liza. “Down and Out in Discount America.” Nation.
Nation, 3 Jan. 2005. Web. 26 Mar. 2008.
Ghemawat, Pankaj, and Ken A. Mark. “The Price Is Right.” New York
Times. New York Times Company, 3 Aug. 2005. Web. 26 Mar.
2008.
Maich, Steve. “Why Walmart Is Good.” Maclean’s. Rogers
Publishing, 25 Jul. 2005. Web. 20 Mar. 2008.
McKay, Floyd J. “Walmart Nation: The Race to the Bottom.” Seattle
Times. Seattle Times Company, 18 Feb. 2004. Web. 21 Mar.
2008.
Reich, Robert B. “Don’t Blame Walmart.” New York Times. New York
Times Company, 28 Feb. 2005. Web. 13 Mar. 2008.
“Walmart Facts.” Walmart Corporate. Walmart Stores, Inc., 2008.
Web. 17 Mar. 2008.
Matthew Douglas, “Is Wal-Mart the Evil Empire?” Reprinted by permission
of the author.